The Miracle Strain (19 page)

Tel Aviv

Tom Carter changed his watch to 1:58 P. M. local time and breathed a sigh of relief as the El Al 747 taxied to a stop on the sun-drenched tarmac of Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport. He was only slightly better at traveling by plane than he was by boat. After slipping away from his police protection he had kissed Holly good-bye at Logan Airport and spent the whole flight in a state of escalating apprehension. None of which had eased his travel sickness. He was still worried that if he were ill he would throw up the low-frequency tracker Jack had insisted he swallow. Jack had already taken an earlier flight out here to brief a "friend" on setting up a monitoring center to track Tom wherever his hosts decided to take him.

The intercom crackled into life, "Thank you for flying El Al and please remember to take all your personal belongings with you when you leave the aircraft. On behalf of Captain David Ury and his crew we hope..."

Tom ignored the announcements as he unbuckled his belt and got ready to leave. His only luggage was a small shoulder bag he'd carried with him in the cabin. At the plane exit the flight attendants said their practiced good-byes, and he walked via an enclosed walkway into the main terminal building. He felt a nervous prickle on the back of his neck and tried to loosen the already open collar of his white linen shirt. As he reached the tiled floor of the main terminal building, a tall man suddenly appeared beside him.

"Dr. Carter, welcome. My name is Helix, Helix Kirkham. Would you please step this way?"

The stranger was a well-preserved man of about fifty, balding, with thick round glasses and intelligent eyes. He looked more like an academic than a killer.

Helix smiled and extended a slender hand, which was firm when Carter shook it. "I trust you had an enjoyable flight. If you give us your passport, we can ensure you avoid all the tedious immigration procedures."

He spoke with an English accent but there was a trace of something else, as if he had originally come from elsewhere.

Numbly, Tom reached into his cotton jacket for his passport. "Where are we going?" he asked.

Helix took the passport from his hands and passed it quickly to one of two large men who had appeared behind him. Helix barked out orders in a language Tom didn't understand and the man scurried off in the direction of the other passengers.

Helix turned back to him and smiled. "You do not need to know where we are going. But don't worry. You won't be there long, just long enough to conduct our business."

Then before Tom could ask any more questions Helix turned, breezed past two armed airport security guards watching the steps down to the runway, and descended onto the tarmac in the direction of a Chinook helicopter.

"Come!" Helix said. "We will answer all your questions when we get there."

The third man walked beside Tom as he followed Helix. Neither man was introduced to him, but Tom sensed they were here to ensure he didn't waver and try to leave. The man who had taken his passport was medium height and featureless. But the man on his right was different. He held himself with an air of importance, and was clearly more than just a guard. He was tall, almost as tall as Tom, and powerful too. His blue-black hair was cropped close to his head, and his smoky green eyes looked out from a fine featured face. If Tom hadn't known that the Preacher was a woman, he would have tagged this man as a candidate. There was something palpably dangerous about him. Even the name Tom heard Helix address him by was strangely unsettling. Gomorrah was hardly a normal name.

By the time they reached the helicopter at the far end of the runway, the man with his passport had returned. Helix handed it back, then led him into the Chinook. Once inside he heard the doors clunk shut behind him, enclosing him in the womb of the helicopter. He remembered Jack telling him not to go and how he'd ignored all pleas for caution.

He thought of Holly. Last night when he'd said goodbye, she'd somehow sensed this trip was different. She'd actually asked him where he was going and why--something she never usually did. He'd told her that he was going to try to help someone who was ill and she'd understood immediately. To Holly that was what he did. He remembered how once at school Mrs. Hoyt, the English teacher, had asked the class to say in one sentence what their parents did for a living. Holly's answer had been a matter-of-fact: "My dad stops people from dying."

As he looked around the gloomy confines of the helicopter, Carter kept telling himself that this was what he was doing now. He had embarked on this trip into the unknown to stop Holly from dying. He was right to ignore Jack's advice because it jeopardized the one chance he had. He simply had no choice, he told himself again. It was no more complicated or sinister than that.

Still, he couldn't help a nervous swallow when he heard the roar of the rotors starting up, and a few seconds later felt the aircraft move off the ground. He was committed now; there was no going back. His stomach lurched, and he hoped he wouldn't vomit. He wished that Jack was with him, so he could feed off his physical courage.

Especially when Gomorrah reached toward him.

The man held something in his hand that looked like an electric razor with a series of red blinking lights down one side. Tom sat motionless as the guy scanned his shoulder bag, shoes, and clothes with the gadget. Tom took a deep breath when he realized he was being checked for tracking devices. He'd agreed to swallow the tracker only because Jack had told him it was "state of the art"--undetectable. But he needn't have worried. After a few moments the smoky green eyes relaxed and the guy nodded his satisfaction to Helix.

"I am sorry about these precautions," said Helix with an apologetic shrug, "but they are necessary." Tom nodded, determined not to show his fear. But just as he began to relax Gomorrah reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a blindfold. If he wasn't able to see he was sure he would be ill, and aside from losing the tracking device he hated the idea of showing this weakness to his hosts--or enemies. When Gomorrah asked him in perfect, accentless English to lean forward, Tom considered struggling. But he just gritted his teeth and let the man wrap the greasy-smelling cloth around his head. Think of Holly, he told himself again.

The disorientating move from gloom to complete blackness as the blindfold tightened around his head made him dizzy. And, as if to compensate for the loss of sight, his sense of hearing and smell became more acute--as did his sensitivity to the chopper's every movement. He became keenly aware of the smell of sweat and oil in the helicopter. And now that he was blindfolded, his escorts began to talk as if they believed the blindfold also made him deaf, or nonexistent.

Their unintelligible, guttural tones cut through the roar of the engines. His chest tightened with panic and nausea brewed in his lurching stomach. He felt as if he were shrouded in a heavy, suffocating blanket. He wanted to rip off the blindfold, pull back the doors of the helicopter, and breathe in the air and light outside. But he did none of these things. Instead he cupped his hands over his mouth, filled his lungs with his own exhaled breath, and forced himself to think of his glass laboratory of light and limitless space. And to imagine standing on the firm, unmoving ground with Holly. At least you're doing something, he told himself again. This has to be better than doing nothing, just letting it happen.

Just letting it happen.

As he listened to the rhythm of the engine and the whup-whup of the rotating blades, his mind folded in on itself. The engine noise had a rattling tempo at its core that reminded him of a sound from his childhood; the summer of '74; that day, not long after his twelfth birthday.

The drapes are drawn in the bedroom. It is dark and the whirringnoise of the broken air conditioner beats out its rattling rhythm. The room is empty and he ignores the crisp, white piece of paperresting on the bed, and rushes to the closed door of the connectingbathroom. He knocks, of course, but he's excited and knows thatif you twist the handle around twice then the old lock doesn'twork. So without waiting for a response he just pushes in.

The steam from the hot bath makes it impossible to see anythingat first. Then he hears his mother say in a voice that doesn't soundlike her own: "Shut the door, darling, and leave me alone for amoment."

"What's wrong, Mom?" Something in her tone makes his excitement disappear, replaced by a tight feeling in his stomach. "Dadsays we should be leaving soon. The movie's going to start." Thenhe turns from closing the door and sees what will stay with himfor the rest of his life.

Tom knows even then that his mother is ill. The visits to thehospital have told him that much. He's heard the word cancerwhispered late at night but it hasn't really registered. And hecertainly doesn't know she's been fighting the tumor growing inher brain for months, and that it's already changed her personalityand brought untold pain.

As the steam clears he sees his mother lying naked in the fullbath. Her face is deathly white and the bathwater is clouded pink. Each of her wrists is lined with grisly crimson cuts.

At first he simply doesn't understand what he is seeing.

"Mommy, you're bleeding. What happened?" he asks in bewildered horror. "Did you fall? Are you all right?"

"I'm sorry, darling. I didn't want you to see me like this."

His first instinct is to run out of here and get his dad.

His mother says, "Tom, darling, I'm fine. Honestly. Don't befrightened. It doesn't hurt at all."

He moves to the door. "I'll get Dad." His throat is too tight withsobs to scream, but something in his mother's voice stops himfrom opening the door. There is a pleading quality he has neverheard before.

"No, don't get Daddy. Not yet."

"But why not, Mom? Why not?" His lower lip trembles uncontrollably. Gradually the awareness trickles into his young mindthat his mom has done this to herself.

"I need to rest, darling. My body's turned against me. But Ilove you and Daddy so much. You will tell him, won't you? Butlater. Okay?"

He is desperate to leave that room, but his mother's eyes areso pained. If he fetches Dad he will only stop her from going. Andalthough he wants his mom to stay more than anything else inthe world, it doesn't seem right to make her stay.

"Sit down, darling. Stay with me and show me how clever youare by counting like you used to."

He has the strange sensation of watching himself from outsidehis own body. He sees himself walk numbly to the chair by thelaundry basket. He moves his mother's neatly laid out wristwatch,bracelet, and necklace, then sits down.

"Count for me like you did when you were small," he hears hersay. "Prime numbers. As high as you can." Her eyes look so sadthat he hurts inside. He leans forward and kneels by the bath,then gently strokes her forehead just as he remembers her doingwhenever he was ill. Despite the steam her skin feels cold andclammy, so he puts both his small hands on her forehead, hopinghis own heat will somehow warm her and make her well again. Then he starts to count, just as his mother asked him to, "One,two, three, five, seven, eleven, thirteen, seventeen, nineteen,twenty-three..."

It wasn't until he reached two hundred and sixty-nine--the number he'd got to when she died--that Tom Carter snapped back to the present. The noise of the helicopter engine now sounded nothing like the air conditioner in his parents' room all those years ago. He had to strain his ears even to hear a faint resemblance.

To this day Tom still didn't know if he should have colluded in his mother's suicide. The guilt remained. His father had tried to convince him that he'd done the right thing. But Tom knew Alex must harbor a bitter regret that his son hadn't alerted him; that he hadn't even said goodbye to the woman he loved so much he had never married again.

As he'd grown older and wiser Tom had taken only two certainties from the experience. The first was that if a blameless woman like his mother could be smitten by cancer, then a God worth believing in--let alone worshiping--couldn't possibly exist. If any power did indeed preside over the cosmos then it was a cruel, arbitrary Lady Luck masquerading as Mother Nature. And only science offered any chance of shortening the odds.

The second certainty was that the next time someone needed his help he would make sure he was as equipped as possible to give it. Even as an adolescent his heroes had been dressed in white coats wielding scalpels or peering down microscopes fighting disease and saving lives. He had known from the start that he needed to be more than just a doctor, or "people mechanic," to win this war. So he had become a genetic scientist too. And he hadn't dedicated his whole life to this crusade just to stand by now that his own daughter needed him.